What do you do when the mainstream is so bamboozled that simple honesty reads like a rebuke?
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
June 25, 2026
While watching video tutorials this morning about the Substack platform, I was frequently admonished by my tutors to post daily comments on other Substacks that cover ideas similar to my own, but this advice is hard to follow when you're advancing viewpoints that no one seems to have even thought of before. Almost every Substack on the subject of mental health has been created based on one of two assumptions: either the authors believe that medical science is "on the job" when it comes to depression, nobly attempting to crack this seemingly toughest of nuts by conducting a never-ending series of expensive clinical trials; or they tell us (as does Mad in America) that scientists are incompetent to treat depression and that their pills do not work and, indeed, even cause problems of their own. Pundits on both sides, however, are alike in one thing: they refuse to notice the gorilla in the room, the fact that drugs exist that could end the depression of med-dependent folks like myself in a trice. At once. Now. My ideas are so ahead of the curve on this topic that, despite my best efforts at diplomacy, there is always the danger that they will be read as a reproach after being shared in the comment section of a mainstream Substack post. Merely speaking the truth amounts to saying, "I know that the author and his fans have impressive honorifics after their names, but has it never occurred to anyone that we, the depressed, do not need your help in the first place, that what we really require is the re-legalization of Mother Nature and the restoration of our right to take care of our own health as we see fit?" And so instead of looking for Substacks that cover topics related to my own, I have to settle for finding Substacks whose creators would seem to be least likely to take offense at the politically incorrect observations that I feel compelled to make.
I leave it to the reader to decide if I have chosen wisely today according to that criteria, after reading the following four comments of mine to four different Substack posts that I discovered after searching Duck Duck Go for "depression", "Szasz" and "Substack." I included the late great Thomas Szasz in my search because he is the one person whom I am convinced would have wholeheartedly embraced the viewpoints that I am espousing in my new Substack viz drug prohibition and patient rights (the chief of which is the right not to be a patient in the first place, by the way). I figure that the creators of any Substacks which mention that author in a favorable light will at least be able to tolerate, if not positively approve of, my short Szaszian critiques of their posts. At least I try to keep my comments short, but it's not always easy when one has "skin in the game," when the injustices of which one writes have negative effects for one on a daily basis -- especially if I'm writing on a day on which I have an appointment with a doctor 1/3rd my age to humbly petition for a refill on an expensive and underperforming "med" that is harder to kick than heroin, while reassuring them that I am not considering suicide, despite the ongoing attempts of racist Drug Warriors to render that option as attractive as possible for folks in my disempowered position.
POST: Thomas Szasz and the Myth of Mental Illness: in brief
COMMENT: Hi, Neil. Thanks for the interesting reminder of Szasz's common-sense (yet still controversial) unravelling of the pretensions of biochemical psychiatry. I come at this subject from a unique perspective: that of a 67-year-old depressed man who has been turned into a ward of the healthcare state by drug prohibition. From this perspective, I have to disagree with the idea that "the simplest and easiest to administer intervention finds its way to the top." That might be so in a free world, but not in the age of the wholesale prohibition of psychoactive medicine.
The simplest intervention would be to let human beings take care of their own health, or in other words, to re-legalize Mother Nature. We need to learn to use Mother Nature's medicines as wisely as possible and stop saying "drugs kill" just as our ancestors said "fire bad." I am devoting the final years of my life to writing essays against drug prohibition from a med-dependent patient's point of view. I have to see a doctor 1/3 my age every three months of my life in order to get a refill on a prescription that is far harder to kick than heroin, all because drug prohibition gave a monopoly on mind and mood medicine to financially interested parties: the medical industry and pharmaceutical companies. I may live to 100 and I will still be a child thanks to America's insane ideas about drugs.
Szasz's writings on psychiatry may be controversial, but at least people are reading them. No one seems to be reading his "Ceremonial Chemistry" or "Our Right to Drugs," which remind us of the obvious interest of the medical field and psychiatry in demonizing substances that past societies have considered to be panaceas since the time of Galen. The WHO says that depression will be the leading cause of disability worldwide by 2030. If that is so, it will only be because of drug prohibition, as anyone knows who is up-to-date on pharmacology, ethnobotany, and psychological common sense. A wide variety of drugs exist that could have cheered me up in a trice, any time these last 45 years when I have been unnecessarily gloomy under my regimen of dependence-causing Big Pharma pills. Drug prohibition outlaws all drugs that inspire and elate (the kind that have inspired entire religions) and yet most healthcare professionals pretend that drug prohibition does not exist. The situation is beyond parody. Depressed Canadian Claire Brosseau is asking for her right to assisted suicide, and not one single commentator on that case will even mention drug prohibition. And so we see that the government might use drugs to kill Claire, but they won't let her use drugs that might make her wish to live.
Sorry to run on, but as I say, I have "skin in this game."
COMMENT: As I see it, Thomas Szasz is not responsible for the fact that the U.S. does not want to spend one cent on helping people, that it prefers to use the police to take care of social problems. We did not have some great policy that Szasz dismantled. We had the police dealing with a social problem that should have been dealt with by people who could really help the homeless and the mentally challenged.
America wants to treat drugs the same way: they want the police to take care of drug issues. The resulting drug prohibition has turned me into a ward of the healthcare state, by shunting me off onto Big Pharma meds that are harder to kick than heroin. I have to see a "doctor" 1/3rd my age every three months of my life to get an expensive and underperforming "med" -- when drugs exist that could cheer me up in a trice, some of which have inspired the creation of entire religions.
That's why I have launched a Szasz-inspired Substack to discuss drug prohibition from the point of view of a med-dependent adult who has been denied godsend medicines for a lifetime now. Szasz saw this problem too -- tho' few Americans even dare to be seen holding a copy of his books on that topic, including "Ceremonial Chemistry" and "Our Right to Drugs."
POST: Dr. Thomas Szasz and his conception of “mental illness”
COMMENT: The WHO tells us that depression will be the greatest cause of debilitation worldwide as of 2030. If Thomas Szasz were alive today, he would point out that this is only because of drug prohibition, which outlaws all substances that inspire and elate. Just re-legalizing cocaine by itself would end depression for most people, as Sigmund Freud well knew -- but self-interested doctors chose to demonize the drug by studying it only for its downsides. And there are hundreds of other drugs -- phenethylamines, tryptamines, opium, laughing gas... that could be used by grownups to end their depression. But we have decided to say "drugs bad" for the exact same reasons as our prehistoric ancestors said "fire bad."
I have had to live with my own depression for 45 years now because of drug prohibition, which denied me the medicines that grew at my feet while shunting me off instead onto expensive and underperforming Big Pharma meds that turned out to be harder to kick than heroin. That's why I am carrying on the work of Thomas Szasz in my Substack, writing on behalf of the rights of med-dependent "patients" to take care of their own health without the "help" of psychiatrists and Big Pharma.
COMMENT: Excellent article. Regarding Szasz and deinstitutionalization: I think we have to look at the system that Szasz's emphasis on civil rights was serving to upend. It's not like we had a caring system in place with qualified employees trying to help street people: we had a system where we let the police take care of our social problems, which seems to be the go-to strategy for conservatives these days, a strategy that helps them hide social problems by arresting everyone who is negatively affected by them. Conservatives dislike Szasz because when you take away the police, it becomes apparent that America has a homeless problem and that it is unwilling to spend any money on solving that problem -- except when the money is going to police forces. This is the same MO that conservatives employ concerning drugs. Instead of re-legalizing Mother Nature's medicines, teaching safe use, and hiring qualified people to intervene advisedly to help people with drug-related issues, they advocate drug prohibition so that they can use the police to arrest their way out of the public relations nightmare caused by people dying in the street. And when calls for civil rights take the police away from such jobs, the conservatives are vexed because America's dirty laundry is now suddenly being washed in public. They dislike this outcome because it clearly demonstrates the downsides of drug prohibition and its failure to regulate and educate. This is when they flip the script and blame the deadly outcome of their own prohibition on drug legalization itself, thus giving them the excuse that they require (at least in the eyes of the gullible public) to go back to the one policy with which these conservatives are comfortable when it comes to dealing with social problems in the United States: arresting their way out of them.
New article in Scientific American: "New hope for pain relief," that ignores the fact that we have outlawed the time-honored panacea. Scientists want a drug that won't run the risk of inspiring us.
Richard Evans Schultes seems to have originated the harebrained idea (since used by the US Supreme Court to suppress new religions) that you have no right to use drugs in a religious ritual if you did not grow up in a society that had such practices. What tyrannical idiocy!
Drug prohibition is a crime against humanity.
Drugs like opium and cocaine should come with the following warning: "Outlawing of this product may result in inner-city gunfire, civil wars overseas, and rigged elections in which drug warriors win office by throwing minorities in jail."
Psychiatrists keep flipping the script. When it became clear that SSRIs caused dependence, instead of apologizing, they told us we need to keep taking our meds. Now they even claim that criticizing SSRIs is wrong. This is anti-intellectual madness.
"Abuse" is a funny term because it implies that there's a right way to use "drugs," which is something that the drug warriors deny. To the contrary, they make the anti-scientific claim that "drugs" are not good for anybody for any reason at any dose.
If opium and cocaine were re-legalized, hospital buildings would no longer be the secular cathedrals of our time. Some of that wealth would actually go to healthy people.
"Those gentlemen who adopt the anti-opium doctrine... are only comparable to the monomaniac, who, sane upon every subject but one, is thoroughly daft upon that." --William Brereton
Prohibitionists have the same M O they've had for the last 100+ years: blame drugs for everything. Being a drug warrior is never having the decency to say you're sorry -- not to Mexicans, not to inner-city crime victims, not to patients who go without adequate pain relief...
And so, by ignoring all "up" sides to drugs, the DEA points to potential addiction as a knock-down argument for their prohibition. This is the logic of children (and uneducated children at that). It is a cost-benefit analysis that ignores all benefits.
Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.
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